Creating A Life You Love: Deep Dive on Habits and Goals
Your life is an accumulation of the habits you live from and the goals you do or do not achieve. That's pretty crazy right? I know you have big goals you want to achieve, habits you want to drop and create, so today we're going to do a deep dive on how I help my clients do this with their mind, body and heart pillars.
Systems, Habits, and Goals
Systems are your processes. You have to have a system and process to actually put your habits and goals into practice. If you are process-oriented, their goals and habits will fall into place. If you are outcome-oriented, it’s going to break down because you don’t have a system to work toward your goals and create habits. You have to think about what’s going to get you to your outcome and this comes from a system. So if you lack systems, then you don’t ever get to your goal.
The Habit Loop
On a high level, a habit loop is:
Cue
Craving
Response
Reward
If you want to build good habits (so much easier than getting rid of bad habits), you use the habit loop. In order to do this, for each phase:
Cue - MAKE IT OBVIOUS
Craving - MAKE IT ATTRACTIVE
Response - MAKE IT EASY
Reward - MAKE IT SATISFYING
You don’t need each step in order to create a habit, but you do need at least one. Focus on the one that will make it easiest to follow through.
Then there’s the side of breaking habits. Again, I recommend building good habits that replace bad habits, and not just trying to break the bad ones. It’s essentially the opposite of building a habit:
Cue - MAKE IT NOT OBVIOUS
Craving - MAKE IT NOT ATTRACTIVE
Response - MAKE IT HARD
reward - MAKE IT DIS-SATISFYING
Here’s an example of a bad habit to break: Binge Eating. If we look at our habit loop that created the habit of binge eating, here’s what I would suspect is happening:
Cue: Stress
Craving: Food
Response/Routine: go to the kitchen
Reward: Stress is easied- dopamine
In order to break this habit, we want to change the craving and response, but keep the reward the same. We’re not necessarily going to be able to break the cue, but if we can break the craving and response, we can break the habit.
The biggest mistake when making goals
One of the biggest mistakes we make when setting goals is making them behavior based goals not outcome based goals. You have to take into consideration what it’s going to take to get to your goals. The other big thing I see is that they are choosing way too many goals at once. You have to start with one that will move the needle and then you can start moving forward.
The Highest Self Method: Mind Body and Heart Pillars
After chasing so many goals in different areas, I realized that choosing one goal in each of these three areas- mind, body, and heart, allows you to feel the most aligned. When we talk about mind goals, we are focusing on: mindset, brain activities, your job/career, becoming mentally stronger and personal or professional growth. When we’re talking about body goals, we are focusing on: fitness goals, food freedom, BODY confidence & optimizing your lifestyle to work for you. And heart goals fall into these areas: self love, self-care, confidence, your purpose, your secret dream, your spirit. DO NOT PICK MORE THAN ONE PER PILLAR! We want you to be successful :)
Once you have those goals picked out, we do weekly check-ins. One of the big ones for me (and those in Mindset Makeover Membership) is with CEO Sunday. Think about what you need to get done that week. What are the habits or systems needed to achieve your goals? How can you schedule it in your weekly planner?
The last piece, but probably the biggest piece is having community for accountability and support. I think community is one of the biggest reasons I’ve gotten to where I am. It just helps keep us accountable.
